"I was interested to read last week that the Trafford Council Leader said, 'We are looking in the future to launch a volunteer army. Many residents want to come forward and work with us.' In the same article saying there will be over 100 job losses. It got me thinking again about volunteering and participation levels, and the premise that volunteering could/can replace paid employment. So, firstly, how realistic is it that there are lots of people waiting to jump up and volunteer?"

I added a lengthy comment, not at all unusual for me, which I posted on the 3rd January 2012. I then awaited moderation but it did not appear. On the 5th January 2012 I received an email from Tony:

"Thank you for your comment on my blog. However, it is too long to publish (the technology wont allow it!) – you’ve written 2,780 words. If you would like to resubmit a comment of up to 30 words we will consider uploading it."

30 words! I've never come across a blog with such a feeble limit before! And even then he says that he will only 'consider' uploading it! I've written longer and shorter comments on blogs before but I've never been turned down on the basis of length! There now follows an expanded version of my original comment.

-----------------------------------------

The NATURE OF WORK in effect!

A subject very close to my heart!

PAID WORK vs UNPAID WORK!

VOLUNTARY WORK (altruism).

WORK/JOB/CAREER vs SERVICE/VOCATION

I wonder who exactly will comprise this volunteer army?

If the unemployed offer their services for free,
including those recently sacked from same paid job now applying to do same job
unpaid, they will fall foul of the DWP availability and actively seeking work
regulations. They must declare any and all work undertaken, including voluntary
work, and if it is judged by the DWP that said work could/should be done for
payment, they may well be penalised accordingly with cuts to their benefits! So
again, I wonder who these volunteers are to be.

Perhaps they will all be pensioners who are not required
to look for work. Could this be a pensioner’s volunteer army? Perhaps some of
these volunteers will be those currently in paid work and prepared to give up
some of their free time. Those signing-on unemployed in receipt of Jobseekers
Allowance (JSA) will not be able to work for free where there is a going rate
for the job, ie where it is remunerated elsewhere. The going rate for the job
and the minimum wage will have to be dealt with.

And this doesn’t even deal with the so-called ‘16 hour
rule’ that applies to any unemployed volunteer in receipt of JSA.

“In fact the rules state that someone on Job Seekers Allowance can volunteer as much as they want to as long as they are still 'actively seeking work'. The 16 hour rule in relation to volunteering, is nothing but a commonly held myth.”

So this rule is considered to be a myth is it! Rubbish!
I can assure you, based on my own personal experience, that this is not the
reality on the ground when signing-on at the Jobcentre. Though the unemployed
can volunteer their time, to qualify for JSA entitlement they must declare any work
done whether paid or unpaid. If they are considered to be ‘enjoying’ this work
‘too much’ their benefit may be suspended. This is made absolutely clear, that
one’s claim is definitely under review/threat!

It is far better not to declare any work done for
free. However, it will be difficult to include this ‘work’ on one’s CV! It is
best if done anonymously, and by not declaring all work done a claimant will be
in breach of the requirements for benefit entitlement. It is far better then to
work voluntarily as an individual in the community and not as a ‘registered’
volunteer working directly for a voluntary organisation, or even indirectly via
an organisation like Tameside Volunteer Centre.

"We strongly believe that volunteers should not be exploited, so we will only ever advertise volunteering opportunities at non-profit organisations (such as charities, community groups or social enterprises), or statutory organisations (such as hospitals and the court service). We also wish to make it clear that volunteering is a choice; no-one should ever be forced to volunteer or threatened with punishment or sanctions for not volunteering." http://www.tamesidevb.org.uk/volunteers.php

T3SC have made no such similar statement to date of which I am aware. Yet T3SC and VCT are currently undergoing a 'merger' to form a single umbrella organsation called Community And Voluntary Action Tameside (CAVAT). Such a moment necessitates a bold statement of position on these matters by this newly forming Third Sector organisation. Will VCT's stronger position take precedence over that of T3SC who appear rather reluctant to make a statement?

Further, it is best that any voluntary work is done
during the evening or at weekends, especially a Sunday, to avoid working
voluntarily during any period that clashes with the times one is prepared to
work as stated on one’s signed Jobseeker’s Agreement (JSAg). Legally one is not
then in breach because doing voluntary work outside the agreed times where one
is prepared to do paid work, and which has been accepted by the Jobcentre. It is
therefore imperative that one limit the time periods for when one is available to
work.

My most recent experience of this was only a couple of
years ago when signing-on at Stalybridge Jobcentre. I expressed my interest in
voluntary work in the community. They brought my whole claim into question
suggesting that my ‘desire’ to find paid work may be undermined by this
interest, that I was perhaps more interested in doing voluntary work than I was
in applying for paid work! If this was found to be the case they would suspend
my JSA. Such an attitude will definitely make those in receipt of JSA think
twice before engaging in any type of voluntary work! In other words, one’s
availability for work is in question if one is ‘enjoying’ voluntary work, and
especially if ‘too much’. After all one must be prepared to end any such unpaid
work immediately that a paid job comes available. As such voluntary sector
organisations are reluctant to take JSA volunteers because of the inherent
unreliability built into the benefits system. This is typical of my experience
when dealing with Jobcentre’s over the last 30 years.

Voluntary work is work done without thought of reward
or expectation of reward.

A Society based upon such a premise is purely ANARCHIC
in all positive senses.

“From each according to their ability, to each
according to their need”, but without compulsion or expectation! It is pure
SERVICE - MUTUALISM.

I have no objection whatsoever to anyone working for
free provided they are neither compelled nor expected to do so. In fact I very
much welcome voluntarism as an antidote to selfishness. Selflessness vs
Selfishness.

Such work must not just be voluntary but must also be
done voluntarily! After all, one cannot be compelled to work voluntarily, can
one! A contradiction in terms! Too often today people enter into ‘voluntary
work’ for the wrong reasons, wrong in the sense that it is done for personal
gain and not out of selfless service. It has become something extra, a necessary
addition for one’s ‘all-important’ CV, perhaps seen as an indicator of one’s social
worth/value/responsibility? Volunteering is a measure of altruistic social
connectedness and service beyond mere self-service. The act of volunteering,
and I emphasise ‘act’, has come to replace, because in competition with,
volunteering from the heart. For many it is no longer heart-felt. Voluntarism
has been selfishly appropriated by those who wish to add such a social ‘accomplishment’
to their social credentials!

This then, allegedly, improves one’s chance of, for
example, getting a job ie real work, ie paid work, or simply getting into
University. The idea of SERVICE is completely ignored. One may be serving the
community far more through one’s voluntary work than through some mere
soul-destroying job.

All of this in effect makes voluntary work compulsory,
though not of the worst kind. Such people are not volunteering because they
care but because of the kudos gained or because without it they may not obtain
the paid position they seek! It has become for them a means to an end and is no
longer an end in itself! As said wrong motive! It is true that many people
enter voluntary work for non-financial reasons besides this modern CV-kudos reward.
People enter paid work for many reasons too and not just for the money. For
some it is only the money. Why else would one work in a destructive job except
for the money!

However, the Con-Dem Government’s WORK PROGRAMME will
through the WORKFARE ‘option’ force/compel the unemployed to work for their
benefits. They will still be expected to look for and apply for paid work, and
if they don’t their benefit will be suspended even though now effectively
employed by and paid by the State.

It’s a punitive regime, intent upon instilling the
‘work ethic’ which they are deemed to lack! In other words, being unemployed is
solely their own fault, and they are therefore in need of behavioural reprogramming
and conditioning. They are the UNDESERVING POOR! I wonder then what kind of
voluntary work will be made available to them given the inherent unreliability
resulting from the Benefits System itself, simply because they have to be
prepared to give-up any unpaid work immediately to enter paid work.

The Con-Dem Government’s WORK PROGRAMME is evidently
an example of wrong volunteering. It seeks to make the unemployed in receipt of
Job Seeker’s Allowance (JSA) work for their ‘dole’ and this work may very well
include being forced to do voluntary work within the Community, Voluntary &
Faith Sector (CVFS). This is slavery and is simply unacceptable. It is, as
said, a contradiction in terms. It is no longer ‘necessarily’ voluntary. I say
‘necessarily’ because some of those ‘compelled’, ‘coerced’, or ‘forced’, to carry-out
voluntary work under WORKFARE schemes may very well have done so without
recourse to a big-stick!

It is my understanding that Volunteer Centre Tameside
(VCT) will not accept volunteers referred directly from the Jobcentre. There is
then no need to sift the voluntary wheat from the involuntary chafe! Anyone
truly wishing to volunteer has only to approach the VCT directly and must not pass
though any intermediary. This will hopefully include any future organisation
tasked with the same kind of functions as the Jobcentre ie any Work Programme providers!
However, I can see how many will be forced to apply directly for voluntary work
under threat of benefit sanctions. It may very well become conditional, though
I am not aware of any such conditionality legislation at the moment! As such
these reluctant volunteers will have been, in effect, referred yet not
referred! How then, I wonder, will the VCT be able to tell true from false? Voluntarism
and volunteering are under threat!

"For
the purposes of volunteering policies the Cabinet Office defines volunteering
and volunteering opportunities as any non-compulsory activity which involves
spending time, unpaid, doing something which is of benefit to others (excluding
relatives), society or the environment."

Phil Hope, Minister of the Third Sector (15th October
2007) Source: Hansard

Many other interesting definitions are also given. Still,
we’ve had a change of Government since 2007 so this particular definition may very
well no longer be in vogue! I really cannot see how it could be in light of the
Con-Dem Government’s Work Programme/Workfare! They are contradictory!

“Giving
unpaid help through groups, clubs or organisations to benefit other people or
the environment. (2001 Home Office Citizenship survey).”

Informal volunteering:

“Giving
unpaid help as an individual to others who are not members of the family. (2001
Home Office Citizenship survey).”

Still, I find these definitions rather unsatisfactory!

I have been very active voluntarily in the community for
many years often/mostly acting as an individual and not as an authorised group
representative. I may very well be active in various groups but I often act on
my own recognisance independently of any group with which I am connected. It
would be fair to say that many would consider much of what I do to be
politically motivated or political, but I hasten to add, non-Party political!

After this point the former more or less clearly
defined division between the Charity Sector and the Private Sector became rather
blurred. It is now possible for all kinds of business arrangements to be
entered into between these two purist extremes birthing a grey world betwixt
the light and the dark!

T3SC have themselves recently formed a Social
Enterprise called T3SC+ and VCT have done the same.

Could such a company, a subsidiary of the parent
company, ‘employ’ the unemployed as compelled voluntary workers?

It may well
again be a matter of individual company ethics, but here the voluntarism
element would not be at issue. Indeed would such an organisation accept unpaid slave
labour drawn from the ranks of the unemployed simply because not directly a
voluntary organisation, being but a hybrid organisation lying between the private
and the charity sector?

The whole area of not-for-profit or non-profit
companies is another grey area. In Tameside this would for example include the
likes of New Charter Housing Trust Limited, a hybrid company born well before
the 2006 Charities Act. See my New Charter Watch blog. All ‘Housing Associations’ (aka ‘Resident Social
Landlord’s’ (RSL’s), most recently re-badged ‘Private Registered Providers of
Social Housing’ (PRP’s) or ‘Registered Providers’ for short) are subject to a
special relationship with National Government because of their involvement with
Social Housing provision. But I won’t go into that hornets nest here!

It is still perfectly possible, yet unacceptable, to
compel those in receipt of JSA to work for their dole in either the Public
Sector or the Private Sector. I expect the Public Sector in Tameside, ie
Tameside Council, to give this short shrift and reject it out of hand! That
leaves the Private Sector. And generally speaking one cannot expect any better
of the private sector whose modus operandi is to operate on a commercial basis
to make a profit. Individual private sector organisations may view what they do
differently and have a different set of priorities. Still the first priority is
to make a profit. Placing those in receipt of JSA here is relatively speaking far
more acceptable simply because this does not result in a compulsory volunteer
contradiction. However, work for dole is tantamount to slavery and supportive
of paid worker displacement, ie sack’em and force’em back to work for their
dole! This is little more than getting ‘scab’ labour. I wonder what the Trades
Unions will have to say about this given that it undermines the Minimum Wage
and the 'going rate' for the job.

The danger is that the unemployed in receipt of JSA
will become a ‘free workers bank’ to fill the gaps created by the economic cuts,
a conscript Chain-Gang! As I’ve said so often before, how are we to tell the
difference between those in receipt of JSA and forced to do Community Work, and
those convicted of a Criminal Offence and similarly forced to do Community
Work ie Community Payback (aka Community Punishment & formerly Community Service! Will they be expected to wear different coloured uniforms! Is this not
the criminalisation of the unemployed in receipt of JSA? I see little reason
for not absconding from such forced labour in the Community and entering upon a
‘life of crime’! The sentence is the same when, and if, caught!

And what about the idle rich! They are not in paid
work. If they are, then they are not idle! Still, if they are truly rich, then
like many of those in the Con-Dem Government, they work but not really for the
money. After all they don’t need the money! They have entirely different
motivations. They may also be greedy.

The only real difference between the rich and the poor,
especially the poor and unemployed, is that the poor need a taxation ‘hand-out’
merely to live/exist whereas the rich do not! For many the idleness of the rich
is more palatable. Firstly many people aspire to join this ‘class’, and secondly
the rich don’t receive a JSA handout and as such are not considered a taxation
parasite. That they don’t work, or have no need to work, is beside the point,
because their money works for them! The rich have always had their servants,
and today money has become even more the intermediary between rich and poor,
between master and servant. It has simply become more obscured.

What do you do to make the rich work harder?

You pay
them more! and use a lot of carrots!

What do you do to make the poor work harder?

You pay them less! and use a big stick!

The art of incentivisation! “the practise of building incentives into an arragement or system in order to motivate the actors within it.”

Why not instead force the idle rich, those merely earning
money with money, to work in the community! After all they are but parasites living
off the backs of the poor and the downtrodden in society.

Many people aspire to climb the greasy pole of
ambition. We’re all Middle Class now! Are we indeed, and who wants to be Middle
Class anyway! Hyacinth Bouquet maybe! The simple idea of Class as once
understood has been eroded, has become more complicated, especially through the
emergence of a new Middle Class or Classes who like the Upper Class also earn
money with money which serves to supplement their earned income to a greater or
lesser degree. The only difference is they have less to ‘gamble’ with!

Thus many of the traditional Middle Class have in
effect entered the realm of the Upper Class in that they have less of a need to
work in the sense of earning income in a job of work and are better able to
earn money with money whether this be playing the stock market or earning bank
interest etc. The money performs the work and not the person! Nevertheless
somebody somewhere has to do the productive real work to pay for this, and this
means the burden is born more and more by the Working Classes and the so-called
Underclass who are either permanently unemployed or frequently moving in and
out of paid work.